Helen Wilson

Name: Helen Louise Wilson

Gender: Female

Age: 18

Grade: 12th

School: Bayview Secondary School

Hobbies and Interests: Camping, writing, field hockey (occasionally), medicine

Appearance: Standing at 5'5" tall, and weighing 124lbs puts Helen smack bang in the middle of average weight for her height. Despite this, she appears slim, as her body is fairly well toned due to years doing ballet and vigorously playing field hockey when she was younger. Since dropping these as a lazy senior, she has accumulated some flab around her stomach and upper arms, but generally finds that people place her in the "skinny" camp, even though she doesn't really agree with this. In most of her joints, Helen is double jointed. Her arms and knees hyperextend past the points which are usually considered normal, she can touch her thumb to her forearm, and place her palms flat on the floor with her legs straight with very little effort.

She has a fairly pleasant, oval shaped face, with hazel, myopic eyes, which are permanently adorned with small rectangular framed glasses, which she would be lost without. Her nose is small and unobtrusive, her mouth generally narrow on her face when she is expressionless, though widens considerably when she smiles, and at this time a dimple on either cheek is revealed. She sports a scar to the left of her chin on her jaw line from falling off a climbing frame as a toddler, which in recent years has begun to stand out more for reasons she cannot comprehend. Her hair is a light brown colour, though she mourns the loss of the blonde it was in her childhood, and is naturally wildly curly, though when it is frustrating her she straightens it. This means that on the average day her hair is one of two extremes, though at the time of capture it was straight, and tied up, with a dark brown alice band holding the front few strands back.

Additionally, at time of capture she was wearing grey pumps, her favourite dark blue jeans, a white tee shirt and a long turquoise coloured cardigan, with long beads in a colour nearly exactly matching the cardigan. She also wore her DKNY watch that was a present for her 18th birthday, and a Pandora bead bracelet on her other wrist along with various hair bands in shades of blue, green and white.

Biography: Helen was born the first child to Alyson and Kris Wilson, both of whom were IT consultants at the time, on June 2nd in St Paul, Minnesota. She immediately entered a family that was growing fast on both sides, and though both her parents lived far away from their families, they saw a lot of them in those first couple of years. When Helen was one, her Mom became pregnant for the second time, and Jenny was born about a month before Helen's second birthday. The two of them generally got on well together for siblings, sharing in their usual mix of fights, some of which Jenny would actually win, much to Helen's frustration. When Helen was three she fell off the small jungle gym in their back garden, hitting her chin on a metal bar at the bottom, and tearing a fairly sizeable hole in the skin over her jaw. She spent a single night in hospital after being given stitches while she was checked for concussion, and to this date this remains the only time she has been a patient at hospital.

When she started kindergarten, it was fairly quickly discovered that she was bright and intelligent, she was able to pick up new concepts easily, though faced growing frustration whenever she didn't understand anything as quickly as she thought she should. Additionally, a common report from the her kindergarten and elementary school teachers was that she tended to over complicate assignments, writing stories that were three times as long as they were told, simply because she was bored and school lacked an outlet. Helen found that she went through strange rises and dips in popularity throughout her elementary school years, usually as a basis of who she was friends with, as she tended to be a follower rather than a leader at this age. Though she was shy when it was fostered upon her, tending to blush at the first available opportunity, she craved attention, occasionally acting up in class because of this, though whenever confronted about this behaviour, she had a tendency to burst into tears and thus gaining her teachers' sympathy. During her elementary school years she had both ballet and piano lessons, but dropped piano after a couple of years because she didn't enjoy it.

In middle school, Helen came out into her own a little more. There were more opportunities there than elementary school, and she enjoyed meeting new people, while feeling occasional nostalgia for the more personal experience from before. She quickly established herself again as someone who was good at her lessons, whilst being fair at most other things (except volleyball, for some reason she could never get the hang of volleyball). In the first few weeks started learning to play the clarinet and picked up field hockey and long distance running (cross country in winter and 1500m in summer) to add to ballet. It was a relatively carefree time, Helen was able to sail through her lessons with relative ease, always doing any homework or reading, and never having to revise for exams; pop quizzes just weren't a worry to her. The down side was that her parents drafted her in to tutor her little sister, Jenny, who was the opposite of Helen in this respect and struggled at school. Helen found that she didn't have the patience to deal with Jenny who didn't grasp things as quickly, and she was quickly fired after a maths tutoring session turned into an agument. Not that she minded being fired much, seeing as she wasn't paid for it anyway. Things were fairly steady at this point. When she was thirteen she had an argument with her ballet teacher, whom she felt was picking on her, and dropped learning to dance in the weeks running up to a show, just to spite her teacher. This she later regretted, wishing that she had continued with dance, and often she wonders what it would be like now if she'd kept the ballet up. Like her mother and grandmother before her she became a girl scout, immediately enjoying many aspects of it, especially the camping and the various activities. She also developed asthma as a result of a bad cold the winter she was fourteen, whilst running in the Ramsey County cross country event, and had to drop out with breathing difficulties much to her frustration.

When she was fourteen, her Dad, Kris, became acutely ill suddenly with a ruptured appendix, which had been misdiagnosed by their family doctor as gastroenteritis. While visiting him in hospital, an attractive female doctor (whom her father candidly remarked as his "favourite"), came past, looking busy and important, and Helen made a decision that had been rumbling in the back of her mind for a while, but she couldn't really remember where from. She decided that she wanted to be, more than anything else in the world, a doctor. Seeing as only a year or so previously she had been telling everyone that she wanted to be an architect, her family and friends were somewhat sceptical at first, even though it was clear she had the brains to do it if they wished, what they didn't understand was the drive.

High school was yet another change, and another chance to get nostalgic. Helen found this jump harder, especially as everyone seemed so much more mature than she did. People were starting to get boyfriends, and she had absolutely no interest in them yet, which made many conversations with her friends boring and tiresome as she pretended to like whoever they did without really caring. She withdrew into herself a little, and started writing little stories, which she would sometimes give to her friends. She was found to have specific aptitudes in science, maths, geography and creative writing, which she considered to be a very strange mix. In high school she became lazy regarding her hobbies; feeling annoyed that she wasn't progressing on the clarinet (due to her own lack of practice) she simply stopped playing it altogether and the clarinet still sits in its case under her bed. Also she gradually slowed her attendance of field hockey, and while she remains on the team, she doesn't tend to go out of her way to practice and play. After a while, the only extracurricular thing she really did was Girl Scouts, first as a member then progressing on to helping out at a group. When she turned sixteen she got a job working in a drugstore on the healthcare counter, selling over the counter meds to customers, and also giving them some rudimentary advice about things like hayfever and coughs, which she adores because she feels like she's actually making a (tiny) difference to her 'patient's' lives, also because she knows that it's the sort of thing that looks good on a college application.

The main reason for this laziness in hobby terms was because as she approached her senior year of high school, Helen was finding that she actually had to work for the first time in her life in order to get grades that would be good enough to study pre-med at Stanford, which is where she really wants to attend, looking forward to getting away from the cold dreariness of Minnesota where she has lived all her life.

Advantages: Helen is a general all rounder, meaning that she can generally succeed in anything that she puts her mind to, and she can be very determined when she wants to be. As a girl scout she is well versed in terms of camping, and making fires, and had some basic ideas of what is edible and what isn't. Additionally, her years of playing various sports has meant that she is fairly fit, and she can run for a fairly long time as her endurance is good. Her interest in medicine means that she has some vague knowledge of first aid (it was the only medical book in their house), so she can treat basic scrapes, and immobilise a fracture.

Disadvantages: She occasionally suffers from asthma when exercising, seeing as she hasn't played field hockey or run seriously for a couple of years she is currently without an inhaler, which might prove an issue if the asthma resurfaces. Her moods aren't particularly stable, and she does have a tendency towards a temper, while at times can be very hyperactive and immature, meaning that she is often unpredictable in her response to things. Additionally, she has never been in a fight, or had any serious confrontation of any kind, and so doesn't actually know how she would respond to such a situation.

Designated Number: Female student no. 100

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Designated Weapon: Glowstick (x6)

Conclusion: Ms. Wilson has potential to make things interesting, if her asthma doesn't get her first. Let's hope she manages to at least make a bit of an impact. That girl scout training of hers could come in very handy, especially given her poor weapon draw.

'The above biography is as written by xylophonefairy. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Kills: None

Killed By: Blood loss after an attempt at performing surgery on herself

Collected Weapons: Glowstick (x6) (assigned), Stone looking vaguely like a face (pocketed in the Tunnels), Scalpel (found and used in the Infirmary)

Allies: Dave Morrison, Isabel Guerra, Winnie Clark, Charlotte Duclare, Kitty Gitschall, Roland Harte, Leila Langford

Enemies: None

Mid-game Evaluation: Helen woke up in a particularly complex part of the tunnels, and spent her first couple of hours wandering them in a state of bemusement and complaining about her poor weapon draw. Eventually, after going round in circles, she encountered Charles Dawson and Naoko Raidon, the latter of whom pointed her in the direction of the exit. Heading in that direction, she came across Quincy Jones, Gloria Benson and Jessie Anderson. After a bit of an argument, and some gun waving, Helen finally managed to make it into the outside world. Her first port of call was to escape the people she had been in the tunnels with in search of people she knew better.

For the next few days, she ambled the southern half of the island aimlessly, eventually coming to the Greens, where Dave Morrison, Isabel Guerra and Charlotte DuClare were sitting watching the sunset. After an awkward introduction, she joined them. Not long after she had joined them, Tyler Franklin asked to join them, but was rebuffed by the others and then threatened Winnie Clark, who was hiding in a nearby bush. Helen rebuffed him irritably, and though she was unaware of it at the time, this improved her island-cred with the rest of the group considerably. Winnie was invited to join.

The next morning, the group moved on. Whilst traipsing the island they game across Liz Polanski in the middle of her Faraday cage experiment. Helen immediately switched into doctor mode, trying to limit the effect of the girl's burn. Once the immediate threat of death was gone, she had time to fully appreciate the significance of what had just happened. Not long after Liz regained consciousness, they heard the announcement over the tannoy about the threat of death to anyone seen assisting Liz. Regretfully, Helen went with the majority and the group had to leave Liz alone in fear of their lives.

It wasn't long before the group found trouble again. They headed towards the Ranger Station, and the first sign that not everything was right was Ethan Kent's body a short way away, and a sign telling them to be quiet. Inside they realised they had reached a blind spot - Ethan had sacrificed himself to destroy the cameras, and Feo Smith setting up a contraption to get the computer back online. Helen, Dave, Isabel, Charlie and Winnie assisted Feo in this task, though Charlie left the group when they had been there for a short time. Helen took turns riding the bike that was powering the computer, reading, and watching Dave and Isabel play endless games of noughts and crosses.

After a while, they were joined by Roland Harte and Kitty Gittschall, whom Helen quickly realised had known Dave and Isabel previously, and there seemed to be some bad blood between them. These ties were quickly forgotten as they finally managed to get the computer working, and Feo wrote down information about the island's coordinates. Roland was tasked with translating these into morse code. Not long after they recieved the information, night ticked into day and the blind spot Ranger Station was, predictably, announced as a Danger Zone. As everyone fled the Ranger Station, Helen stayed behind for a few seconds to help destroy as much of it as possible before escaping. Roland was close on her heels, and they both had barely escaped the confines of the danger zone when the timer ran out. Feo wasn't fast enough and her collar detonated.

As the group, by now Team Ego, walked towards the swamp, Feo's death played heavily on her mind. She was distracted by the arrival of the injured Leila Langford, and threw all of her mind into helping her. Meanwhile, the rest of the team played a "game" with the trumpet whereby they transmitted the morse code location to whoever might be listening. Helen watched this anxiously, trying not to let her face betray the group and hoped her worried expression would appear to be about Leila rather than her suspected imminent collar explosion. Except nothing happened. Not immediately, anyway. Not lnog after the "game" was completed, they were interruped by Naoko Raidon, Julian Avery and Mizore Soryu. There was a scramble to escape, and gunfire ricocheted across the swamp.

Team Ego disbanded at that point.

Helen found herself running north with Dave, Leila and Kitty. They sheltered in the felled wood, and after a while Dave went back to try and salvage his pack and to see what had happened to the others. Once it became clear he wasn't coming back, Kitty went after him. Helen was torn between wating to stay with Kitty, whom she had spent a couple of days with and so knew to a degree, and not wanting to abandon her 'patient' in the way she had been forced to abandon Liz. In the end, she stayed with Leila, treating the girls injuries as well as she could.

While Leila was recuperating, Helen slowly became aware of a pain in her abdomen. It started around her belly button, and slowly began to localise towards her right inguinal region. Initially she tried to ignore the pain, assuming it was her mind playing tricks on her as she had always been a bit of a hypochondriac. But as Leila got better, Helen quickly got worse, and she gradually started to realise that she was either going to have to do something about it or die from appendicitis. As she had read the theory on how to perform an appendectomy after her Dad suffered with the same disease a few years previously, she knew she was probably the only person on the island that could do it, and this knowledge filled her with a strange kind of confidence, a sense of 'this was meant to be'.

Having seen the Infirmary on the map, Helen decided that that was where they should go. In her desperation, she tapped into her previous running experiences, and Leila, with her recent injuries, was unable to keep up. Reaching the infirmary, her pain having been dulled by the adrenaline that was coursing through her system, Helen made her way to the operating theatre. She collected the equipment from the operating room, then performed the operation in the cleaner looking (and dead body free) pre-op room. She did the surgery. Midway through the operation, she heard S.T.A.R's announcement about the escape, and this spurred her to complete the operation and follow the voice to the beaches.

During her struggle to the beaches, the anaesthetic and adrenaline wore off, leaving Helen in pain so severe she could barely walk. This didn't stop her pride when she saw the boats that she had helped to bring there. Then she realised that in her haste she had failed to complete the operation to a satisfactory level, and had ruined the stitches by walking across the island, and as a result had been bleeding out continuously almost since she had left the infirmary. She collapsed and died in the face of her own success, near to the tree line on the Eastern Beach.

Post-Game Evaluation: No, no, no, you're doing it wrong:  inflict fatal gut wounds on the other students, not yourself! Seriously, this game just saved some hospital one giant malpractice suit in the future, if G100's surgery attempt here was any indication. She spent most of her time on the island patching up suicidal people, between Liz and her crusade and Leila and her determination to go out with a bang; overall, she really was an example of how not to spend your last few days alive.

Memorable Quotes: "Well, I guess there's places to go. People to try not to see,"

"Apparently if we keep on going up this tunnel," she used her hand to indicate the way in which they should move, "and take the next left, it'll bring us to a beach- we could, er, build sandcastles or something I guess."

"This is all there is. At least three of us, probably four, are going to die in the next few days, and after that there is nothing. These are our last fucking days on Earth, and I don't even have the energy to enjoy them. All the things I never did..."

"One of the things I never understood," Helen said out loud, realising quickly that talking was painful, but wanting to speak. She was acutely aware that her time might well be limited, and there was so much she had to say first. "Where are all the people who used to live here? They can't have gone that long ago, there was a computer." The memory of the computter made her smile fleetingly. They had done so much with that computer. "Don't they recognise their homes and their hospital? Their beach and harbour? All this stuff, it's so familiar and I've only been here for nine days. Why don't you speak up? Why don't you tell anyone where we are?"

Other/Trivia

 * Semi self insert of her med student handler
 * Has medical knowledge roughly corresponding to someone in their second year of medical school for the above reason.
 * Member of Team Ego

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Helen, in chronological order

The Past:

No threads

Pre-game:

V4:
 * Bats & Rats & Blind Cave Salamanders
 * Day of the Dove
 * Faraday's Cages
 * The House of the Rising Sun
 * -.-- -.-- --..
 * In Honesty, We Didn't Plan This Far
 * Surgical Interventions
 * The Cavalry Arrives

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Helen Wilson. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''


 * I think Helen was a really brave, very well-written character. She stepped up under pressure and pulled out everything she knew from her arsenal of medical knowledge, and she remained realistic about wanting to survive. Her interactions with two escape attempts were vital, even if she didn't make it off the island (so bummed about that!) and she didn't waver from her values. The writing was well balanced in terms of relating her inner monologue, her past experiences off the island, and her reactions to the chaos in which she was often mired. --penguin_alien
 * I liked Helen. She was a good member of her escape group, especially because she often provided a more serious and grounded viewpoint when compared to her allies Dave and Isabel. One thing that I think gets forgotten about Helen is how big an impact she had on the game. She was involved in helping treat Liz Polanski, was tied to the group that executed Ethan's escape plan, and overall was a quiet yet key presence in most of V4's big events. This, of course, amplifies the tragedy of her falling just short of attaining the fruits of her work. So, yeah, Helen's a cool character who could use a bit more love, and is actually one of the key characters of V4, despite never really getting credit for it. - MurderWeasel